The Complete Moron's Guide to Sewing
by Pisceanduality
Summary: Arthur shows up in the wee hours of the morning to finish up a job. Ariadne is not amused. Especially when he looks like he was beaten half way to hell. Now revised and continued in "More Guides for Complete Morons"


Originally written for the Inception kink meme on LJ: Arthur gets beaten up and Ariadne takes care of him while scolding him for getting hurt in the first place.

Now revised because I'm on summer vacation and some details still irked me when I reread it.

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**The Complete Moron's Guide to Sewing**

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Ariadne was used to dealing with a certain degree of noise at all hours of the night. She'd lived in her apartment so long that she didn't hear the neighbors' dogs bark any more and the occasional sound of a train passing nearby was just white noise.

What _did_ manage to wake her up in the middle of the night was something she had never heard in the middle of the night: singing. Drunken singing to be more precise.

_"It's four in the morning, battered and numb..."_

It wasn't half bad, if she was to be completely honest with herself, but she was far too tired for that. The voice got louder until they stopped at her door and started to knock (bang) on her front door. She turned to see the small digital alarm clock by her bed. It was almost four in the morning.

"Oh my God. I am going to kill whoever that is."

Because Ariadne really didn't need help getting _less_ sleep at night. College did that just fine on its own, thanks. Crawling out of bed, she headed for the door with heavy, clumsy and very tired footsteps. She looked through the peephole and seriously wondered if she was dreaming. She didn't even bother checking for her totem because her pajamas had no pockets. (It was most likely in the pocket of yesterday's jeans.)

She opened her door, quite flabbergasted. "Arthur? What the..."

He was almost nothing like himself. Or at least the self she'd seen over six months ago. The main difference between the two seemed to be a lot of alcohol and a good beating. There was a bruise across one of his cheeks and he had a split lip. He leaned against her now open doorway, swinging his face in closer to hers and wincing. Normally she might have enjoyed the intimacy of the moment if it weren't for the smell of him. "Oh my _God_," and she would have covered her mouth, but Arthur's hand was already there.

"_A loaded room and an empty gun_," he continued to sing, but not quite as loudly as before. The jovial drunkenness that he'd spewed in the hallway was gone. He looked serious and suddenly more sober. "Let me inside," he whispered to her, so low she almost didn't hear him.

She nodded and opened the door wider (his hand still covering her mouth) and prodded her backwards. He motioned for her to be quiet and then let go of her. She rushed to close her door and ended up slamming her door shut by accident. Ariadne winced, but Arthur didn't seem bothered. She saw him pull out a gun from under his suit and lay it on the table. All supposed inebriation gone.

Arthur started looking around her apartment in what seemed like random places, running his fingers over her things. He seemed to be looking for something specific. He bent down to look underneath her coffee table and then behind her bookshelf. He reached behind the bookshelf and pulled out a little device no bigger than a bottle cap.

With a frown, he crushed it in his hand. She watched him find another one in her tiny kitchen and another in her bedroom and bathroom. "Your apartment was bugged," he said once he thought he'd found all of them.

"What's going on?" she asked him, still trying not to retch from the smell as he moved past her. "And what happened to you?"

"Just finishing up a job," he replied softly, still half-heartedly scanning her living room before looking at her.

Bewildered and angry, Ariadne put her hands on her hips. "What for? What the _hell_ is going on?"

He went to sit on her couch but she quickly pulled him back by the arm and he let out a hiss of pain. "Damn it! I told you, I'm finishing up a job. I came to make sure that all they did was bug your apartment."

He tried to sit down again but she wouldn't have it. "Don't you dare sit on my furniture like that. I have a shower. Go use it," and she pointed in the direction of her bathroom.

Arthur let out a puff of a laugh and gave out a small groan. He slowly began to peel his suit coat off of him and it looked like it wasn't such an easy thing to do. Ariadne felt her anger give. She'd had a soft spot for him even before he'd pulled that tricky kiss during the Fischer job. That kiss had only led to Feelings. Feelings that were _very_ unprofessional and borderline unladylike. (She was pretty sure no one but Eames knew about this because Eames always seemed to know about these kinds of things.)

Ariadne braved the stench that Arthur seemed to be giving off and helped him out of his coat. "Someone unhappy with your job performance? Or did you just happen to get mugged recently?"

"It can't be both?" he answered and began to loosen his tie and unbutton his vest. "Thank you."

"You can thank me by taking a shower. And maybe burning your clothes. Jesus, how did you end up _smelling_ like this?"

He gave her a dirty look at the mention of burning his clothes. "Had to get rid of a tail. Sometimes that involves some very unclean solutions."

He turned to lay his coat and tie across the back of a chair and Ariadne noticed a wet, red stain across the shoulder of his shirt. "Arthur, you're bleeding," and she began helping him peel off the layers of his clothes. Ariadne couldn't help but blush just a little.

He winced once or twice, but for the most part she didn't hear much out of him. Once he was completely shirtless she saw him smirk down at her. She blushed harder. "Don't be an ass," she warned. She turned him around and began to inspect the wound. "You've been around Eames too long."

"I didn't say anything," and she could hear him smiling.

It wasn't bleeding too badly anymore. She felt him go rigid when she poked and prodded at his shoulder. Ariadne also noticed the rest of the bruises and scrapes on his back. Some parts were still black and blue. Others were turning a sickly yellow. Not all of these were fresh wounds. She wondered how long he'd been doing this job. And what kind of job could do this to him. "What kind of job did you take this time?" she half muttered to herself.

Whether Arthur had meant to answer her or not, she added, "You look like you're going to need some stitches here."

"I trust you can sew?" he replied.

"What? Well, I can fix a hole in my sock," she responded, looking at his blood on her fingertips. "Badly."

"I've had much worse," he replied, then began heading towards her bathroom.

"But I don't know how to-"

"Google it," he called back before he closed the bathroom door.

So she Googled "how to stitch a wound" and sure enough she found detailed instructions. After gathering what she needed (a needle, thread, and some disinfectant) she heard Arthur coming out of the bathroom. "I think I have everything we need. Shouldn't you- why are you wearing my bathrobe?"

Her bathrobe wasn't particularly girly in any overt way, but it was obviously too small for him. What went half way down her calf was barely to Arthur's knees. "I don't have a change of clothes with me."

"You're going to ruin it," she almost pouted at him. She could already imagine raw wounds bleeding into the fabric. "I liked that robe."

"I'll get you a new one to replace this," he offered. "Sorry."

He sat down on the dining chair she'd pulled out for him. She went about disinfecting the needle and thread. "This isn't going to be very good, I hope you know," she warned him.

He gave a short laugh. "Well, you can't be worse than me doing it myself." He pulled his arms out of her robe carefully and she could see that he was still in a great deal of pain. "Besides, you never know when this particular skill will come in handy again."

"'Again?' I hope there isn't another occasion where you end up singing outside my apartment in the small hours of the morning and needing stitches."

"Does that mean I can sing outside your apartment when I don't need stitches?"

Ariadne laughed and then realized that Arthur was flirting with her. _Arthur_. The man who was nothing but professional during their job together (well, except for that quick, almost-didn't-happen kiss in a second-level dream). Eames regularly referred to Arthur as a stick-in-the-mud and as far as she could recall, Arthur had lived up to the nickname while they worked together. He was usually very serious and spoke briefly unless he had been instructing Ariadne in world-building or teaching her how dreaming worked. Now, he was _flirting_ with her. Maybe he actually_ was _drunk.

"Are we dreaming, or are you drunk?" she asked him, somewhat hesitantly. She tried to piece together what happened this morning. She'd been sleeping, and then Arthur had woken her up by singing and banging on her door. Then the gun (which was still on her dining table), the horrible smell, and the blood.

"No, we're not dreaming," he replied and she could still hear the smile on his lips. And as though he had read her mind," You've never seen me when I'm not on a job, have you?"

Ariadne didn't say anything and tried to focus on the wound. There didn't seem to be any debris that needed removing and the shower he'd taken had already cleaned most of it. Thankfully nothing looked infected. She looked at the needle in her hands and the wound she was about to start stitching. Her hands were shaking and Arthur could feel it on his back. "Relax," he told her calmly. "It'll be harder if you're nervous."

She took a deep breath. "Are you sure you don't want some painkillers?"

"Do you have some?"

She winced. "Tylenol?" He laughed and she could tell it hurt him a little to do that.

"Just do it and stop stalling. The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll be done."

Ariadne took another deep breath and started to work on her first stitch. The needle in her finger still shook, but it got better as she kept working. Arthur kept mostly silent. She figured this wasn't the first time he'd needed stitches.

_Sew away from yourself_, she remembered reading.

"So how did you get this cut to begin with?"

"After we did the extraction, the mark's security found us. The architect we had sold us out to save himself. Not the first time that's happened- ah."

"Sorry, I'll do this is fast as I can."

"No, don't rush it. Keep your stitches consistent. Take your time."

He sounded calm and collected, much like the Arthur she was used to. Ariadne took another steadying breath and prompted him to continue with the story.

"So, they caught up with me and the extractor I was working with. They tried to take me down and obviously failed."

Ariadne gave out a huff. "Well, they got you pretty good, from what I can see," she said, irritated that he'd been hurt to begin with. She hadn't been there. He'd used a different Architect. He hadn't even asked her. She considered accidentally stabbing him in her next stitch, but he was already beaten half way to hell.

"Not to sound overtly cocky, but you didn't see what they looked like by the time I got away."

She looked at the gun on the table and wondered how many bullets were left in it. Ariadne hadn't seen Arthur use a gun outside of a dream world. She assumed he knew how to use one in reality, but the idea of Arthur really shooting (killing) someone sat strangely. He must have felt her unease.

"The Fischer job was pretty mild compared to some. No permanent bullet holes, so to speak."

"Except for Saito. He spent a lifetime in limbo," she reminded him.

She finished the last stitch and started to tie off some semblance of a knot. When she was finished, she patted away what little blood was left on his skin and rose to wash her hands. He grabbed her by the wrist as she turned to go. "Thank you. I know you probably didn't want to do that."

Ariadne was going to shoot herself if she kept blushing like this. "Well, it's not something I'd ever thought I'd do," she confessed, "but don't worry about it."

She awkwardly tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear with her free hand. He let go of her and almost seemed at a loss for what to say next. She thought he looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn't sure how to say it. When he said nothing, she began to clean up.

Ariadne washed away the blood on her hands and the needle she had used. She was so tired now that the strange affair of stitching Arthur together was done. With a deep breath, she steadied herself against the kitchen counter, feeling half drunk off lack of sleep. She turned the water off and turned to look at Arthur, still sitting in her bathrobe and trying to feel for her handiwork in his shoulder. "It's not bad, especially for a first timer."

Ariadne rolled her eyes and wondered who could possibly have stitched him up worse than her. The stitches were crooked and uneven and looked like something out a Frankenstein movie.

"I miss building." The last few months had been boring and building real buildings wasn't good enough anymore. No matter how much she tried to go back to her normal life, it just wasn't good (or grand) enough. "And you need an Architect now, don't you?"

"I might," he replied, "but I don't have a job to work on right now. I'm on vacation, so to speak."

She looked him over (split lip, bruised face, stitched shoulder, exhausted eyes) and thought if nothing else, Arthur needed sleep. Talking about building and work could wait for now.

"Why don't you take my bed, you're too beat up to take the couch."

"No, it's-"

"Stop being a damn gentleman and let me take care of you," she scolded him. "You're going to open a wound trying to sleep on your side on that couch anyway."

Arthur let out a small chuckle and nodded. He started to rise from the chair and head towards her bedroom. She heard him yawn and then felt the urge herself. It wasn't until then that she realized that she'd slept maybe three hours before he had showed up at her doorstep. The sun was starting to rise outside.

She watched him carefully crawl into her bed. He heaved a breath as he lay belly down and Ariadne could almost swear he was already asleep. She covered him up with a blanket and as she moved away to make a bed for herself on the couch, she felt him grasp her wrist again. He used his left arm (the side with a stitched shoulder) and she wondered just how much pain he was in. "Thank you, Ariadne."

He looked so tired and beaten and all she could think about was how to make him more comfortable. And to make sure that nothing like this ever happened again. "You're welcome," she replied and pushed some of his wet hair out of his eyes. "Be more careful next time, will you?"

"Promise," he sighed into the mattress, already drifting off into sleep. His hand slipped from her wrist.

"You'd better. You end up like this again and I might kill you myself."

She crossed her arms, half serious. Arthur didn't say anything. "I missed you," she whispered to herself, realizing that she had, in fact, missed him since she'd seen him last. Probably more since they hadn't managed to say good bye to each other after getting off the plane.

Whether he heard her or not, she didn't care. Ariadne turned and made a bed for herself on her couch where she attempted to sleep until well past noon. Unfortunately, Arthur snored like a sick walrus.


End file.
